Is the real problem with ESO's poor performance.....

Lady_Linux

related to toxicity in the work place?

https://onezero.medium.com/toxic-workplaces-are-driving-video-game-developers-to-unionize-cda5c8b73317

Elsonso

Glass door suggests that 'crunch' is not a problem at ZOS. Take that for what it is worth.

117Dios

What kind of mental gymnastics is needed to reach this conclusion

idk

I do not think anyone here in the forums could appropriately discuss what goes on at ESO. Those that could would not for obvious reasons.

Further, crunch would be more of an issue for finishing a game for launch as much more work is required to get a new game ready for launch than getting a DLC prepared. Especially when that DLC is part of a regular cadence of new content. The person they quoted as working 100 hours a week as speaking of getting a game ready for launch.

Considering game developers compete with the deep wallets of corporate America ( and EU) for game developers I seriously doubt that those that work to maintain games like ESO, WoW and FF are pushed to 100 hours per week normally. As a gamer I found this interesting when I worked with "game developers" to build several online training modules that were amazing. So they have good options outside of the gaming industry.

Interestingly, major corporations probably get the best talent in these areas to begin with as they often can offer the best salaries and benefits.

pdblake

Yeah that must be it. Incompetence has nothing to do with it.

Zacuel

I also like to believe I know more than I really do.

jcm2606

How many times do you have to bend yourself into a pretzel to find and justify other reasons for the poor performance, before you accept that it has always been the simplest option -- ZoS just has no idea what they're doing.

Stebarnz

Fake news!

zyk

I think it goes higher than that. By all public accounts, ZOS is a pretty contented studio.

ESO performance issues likely stem from Zenimax Media because they control ESO's budget and have executive control of the title. ZOS probably lost a lot of autonomy after ESO launched late, unfinished and failed to retain subscribers shortly after launch. It has been reported ESO cost upwards of 200M to develop, so there was probably a lot of ROI concerns at the time.

ESO today is not the game it was supposed to be. It was extremely ambitious. It was supposed to have very deep PVE, PVP, Crafting and Trading. New content was supposed released every 5 weeks. None of these were fully realized.

The team that would have developed content so aggressively was cut in size and ZOS sat on mostly completed content like IC and Orsinium for a year while they created the vision for the game we play today.

Zenimax is one of the largest publishers in the world. It is worth billions of dollars. They have the in-house talent and financial resources to fix all of ESO issues if they had the will to. In my opinion, they should do everything possible to deliver some of the other experiences promised to us.

I think ZOS as a whole does the very best it can for PVE and PVP endgame players, but has limited resources to do. I think the heavy focus on the Crown Store is dictated by Zenimax Media.

imno007b14_ESO

What zyk says. Zenimax is a holding company, and by definition "a holding company exists for the sole purpose of controlling other companies." They're buying up other companies left and right and obviously exist mainly for the purpose of making more and more money. Which I suppose isn't inherently evil, but it seems that every time you have shareholders with the unrealistic expectation that profits have to go up x-percentage every single quarter forever and ever, that things quickly go down hill for their customers.